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BAINBRIDGE - Hensley “Randy” Conner knew from a relatively young age that he wanted to fly. In December of 1972 while flying a mission over North Vietnam, the then-deputy airborne commander for a string of B-52 bombers had to wonder why.

“We were hit by a SAM (surface-to-air) missile over Hanoi and we headed for Thailand, we had a couple of engines knocked out and were on fire and we all had to get out (of the plane) over Thailand,” Conner recalls. “I was the seventh man on the B-52 crew — the other six guys had an ejection seat. I jumped out of a hole that the navigator left when he ejected.”

Conner floated to earth behind a hutch in a small Thai village and had to try to communicate with villagers who had watched him come down that he was hoping a helicopter was coming for him. After a short while, he spotted the chopper in the distance and popped a flair to signal where he was. As he was being picked up, he was told it was not a safe area, and the armed Marines who jumped out to make sure he could board without incident reinforced the message.

His entire crew made it back safely, but he later learned that he had almost become an afterthought.

“The other six guys were picked up in one chopper and they headed off with them and then they said, ‘Hey, you forgot our commander,’” Conner said with a smile. “So they had to have another chopper come looking for me and he found me. We were all a little beat up — bruises, cuts, enough to get a Purple Heart which, of course, we got.”

Turns out it was just another day at the office for a career military man of 29 years who enlisted out of high school in January of 1950 during the Korean War, but was not sent overseas for that conflict. He initially went into radar maintenance and then pursued a commission as a navigator. A couple years later, he went through pilot training and became a pilot who would go on to fly more than 200 missions during the war in Vietnam.

Conner, now 84, had a prior exposure to the military. His father served in Europe during World War I, but Conner said he didn’t like to talk about the experience. With the passage of time, Conner said he has had an easier time himself when anybody asks about the mostly night missions he flew and the number of holes in the aircraft he suffered under fire in both the B-52 and the B-57 with a two-person crew.

A lot of those holes came from low-level approaches the air attacks had to make.

“We would fly into North Vietnam and we would let down over the water and would head into land and we had a radar ship airplane and he would look for trucks and if he saw one, he would tell us and we would come in low level and it was sort of surreal, really, like in a movie — you’re seeing the coastline and you’re coming in and, all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose,” he said. “Boom, boom, boom, boom, and you’re trying to avoid them.

“I remember one time my navigator saying turn right, and I said ‘I am,’ and then it was turn left and I said I was trying to miss them. The (anti-aircraft) was coming up, boom, boom, like a red-hot beer can, a 105. We were never hit by them, but I had a lot of holes from small, 50-cal fire.”

While the passage of time has made it easier to talk about his experiences, that’s not universally true.

“One of the traumatic things I remember was these Marines were out of Da Nang and one day a little kid walked up to them and handed them a grenade,” Conner said, visibly upset even decades later.

With his passion for flying, it seems only appropriate that it would be from the air that he would spot where he wanted to spend his retirement years. While working out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Conner flew over the Bainbridge area and spotted dozens of acres off Cave Road that looked beautiful to him. He and his wife, Fay, now call that land home, and inside the den of their house is a wall that Fay calls his “Hero Board.” The wall contains several plaques and mementos of his time in the service, including a shadow box containing many of his commendations.

He returned from his overseas service with a Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and 13 air medals. He received a Legion of Merit commendation upon his retirement.

Despite the commendations, he returned to a society that wasn’t ready to welcome the Vietnam veteran with open arms. He said he was luckier than most, because as a career military man, he returned to life on a military base rather than reintegrating immediately into civilian life. Even so, he felt the impact of some of the negative backlash against the war so prevalent at the time.

“They told us if you go off base, wear civilian clothes,” he said. “We were disappointed in the reception, and it’s changed 100 percent now. The military’s considered okay now, but we were (seen as) the guys going out killing babies and that sort of thing.”

Reception notwithstanding, Conner wouldn’t change his decision to make a career in the military for anything.

“I was able to do two things — serve my country and make a living for myself and my family for 30 years,” he said. “I would certainly do it again because I enjoyed the flying, I enjoyed the moving around all over the country, all over the world. Actually, it’s not a bad career for any young man or woman this day and age to join the military to serve their country and have a good life.”